PRO FOOTBALL

PRO FOOTBALL; No More Springtimes for the XFL as League Folds

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: May 11, 2001

The XFL expired yesterday, three weeks after the last game of its only season, a victim of dismal television ratings, a subpar quality of play and inflated expectations.

The demise of the upstart football league is a highly visible failure for its parents, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment and NBC, which were planning to spend a combined $100 million through the 2002 season to launch it toward profitability.

In the end, each partner's after-tax losses are estimated at $35 million, said one industry executive.

''The audience came, and they didn't like it in the numbers we needed to go forward,'' said Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Sports. ''The fault lies with us.''

NBC had made it clear in recent weeks that the XFL's time slot on Saturday nights would no longer be available to the league. Survival then hinged on the league continuing to have a broadcast outlet Sunday nights on UPN.

But yesterday, UPN backed out of the XFL. The second-tier network wanted more for its airtime next season than the XFL was willing to pay.

''All the stars had to line up for us to go forward, and the broadcast component was the most important one,'' said Vince McMahon, the chairman of W.W.F.E. ''We hoped everyone would look at this as we did, as a brand-bulding business. But we didn't go forward. That's all.''

The XFL was announced in February 2000, by McMahon, who is best known as the bellicose, barrel-chested, cartoonish impresario of his ''Raw Is War,'' ''Smackdown!'' and pay-per-view wrestling shows.

NBC joined as a 50-50 partner a month after McMahon's announcement and offered Saturdays nights.

Ebersol believed the XFL would attract more young viewers than the usually low-rated Saturday night programs historically provided. But by late in the season, NBC's XFL games were producing the lowest ratings in prime-time history.

''It was a prudent risk that we thought was smart, given that ownership of a league provided great insurance against wildly escalating TV rights fees,'' Ebersol said.

The XFL was designed to glorify hard-hitting by hungry players who were overlooked by the N.F.L. and to appeal to fans with pigskin appetites left unquenched by a full N.F.L. season.

And despite widespread disbelief, McMahon insisted that his football would be real, not scripted, as his wrestling shows are.

The XFL believed it could succeed with a winter-spring schedule, with players who were paid an average $45,000 and got bonuses for winning, and by having games called by wrestling announcers and a former wrestler, Jesse Ventura, the governor of Minnesota. Despite rules changes like banning fair catches, or novelties like turning the coin toss into a mad scramble for the ball, the XFL was not different enough.

In its early weeks, the XFL displayed troupes of cleavage-baring cheerleaders and trotted out wrestling stars like the Rock. What looked like a curious, attention-getting, football-wrestling hybrid changed as McMahon phased out the peripheral appetizers to focus on his brand of minor-league football.

''The buck stops with me,'' McMahon said. ''We let NBC down. Had we had more time, we might have been able to do things differently and that goes with the expectations certain people thought the W.W.F.E. would do in the football world.''

Players had barely four weeks to train, and the first game on NBC was a moribund 19-0 shutout. Despite heavy promotion of its players, the XFL could not make its ''stars,'' such as quarterback Tommy Maddox, running back John Avery, place-kicker Joe Cortez and wide receiver Jeremaine Copeland, into memorable personalities.

The league succeeded in drawing an average 23,500 fans to its games, and used audio and video technology to let fans and viewers listen and watch conversations inside huddles and between coaches and players. But the hope of catching wild behavior in locker rooms at halftime of games died quickly.

Whatever the innovations, they were not enough to save the league. TV viewership plunged after its first week when NBC posted a stunning 9.5 Nielsen rating. In succeeding weeks, ratings fell precipitously, not only on NBC, but on UPN and TNN, which carried the XFL on Sundays.

NBC averaged a 3.3 for the regular season far below the 4.5 promised to advertisers, and managed a 2.1 rating for the championship game on April 21, which was won by the Los Angeles Xtreme. UPN averaged a 1.3 and TNN a 0.8. (Each national rating point represents 1.02 million TV households.)

''To ask our affiliates to come back for a second year would have been very difficult,'' said Adam Ware, the chief operating officer of UPN. NBC affiliates had been giving away its time on XFL games, he said, killing the value of commercial spots UPN's affiliates could sell.

McMahon said that until UPN's departure, he was noodling with survival configurations, including cutting back to six teams. Ebersol said he looked at possible weekend daytime alternatives for the XFL on NBC, but there were none.

''We tried to figure out every conceivable way to make this work, but we came to the cold, hard decision that this was not going to work,'' McMahon said.

Ebersol, who got public support for taking the XFL risk from Bob Wright, the chairman of NBC, and private approval from Jack Welch, the chairman of General Electric, NBC's parent company, insisted that the XFL's flop was no worse than the death of a major prime-time show.